‘Industry’ Season 4 Episode 7 Recap: The Takedown

Henry Muck is a hard man to love. He is given to prolonged periods of dark depression, during which he is completely unreachable. His addictions have made him both unreliable in the clutch and deceptive as a matter of course. His unresolved anger over his horrifying upbringing and his repeated public humiliation leads him to bouts of explosive, uncontrolled rage. His attempts to be a good person always fall just shy of the mark because being thought of as a good person by others is his primary goal. In the meantime those efforts simply alienate those around him, all of whom hold no pretense of goodness whatsoever.

Still, I don’t think he deserves to be the fall guy for an international financial conspiracy he had nothing to do with, hung out to dry by all those who purport to care about him. Do you?

In large part, there’s nothing Henry could have done to stop this from happening; he was effectively selected to be a fall guy in case the company’s mastermind Whit Halberstram needed one. That elaborate supervillain letter Henry received last episode is just confirmation of how Whit sees both Henry and the world. “I feel like I’m in the room with a reptile,” Henry says the next time they’re together.

But Henry helps seal his own fate, I think, by blowing up at Yasmin. He underestimates just how over his bullshit she is — his flakiness, his disappearances, his infidelity, his mismanagement of their money. (He sunk it all into Tender stock!) But there’s a moment when he screams at her and she just shuts down, suddenly telling him yes Henry, of course Henry, you’re right Henry. It feels like the reaction of someone who’s faced abuse. All night long she stares at the ceiling without sleeping a wink.

However, Yasmin is no longer the powerless little girl she was when her degenerate father tormented her. Now she’s a canny operator, a proven survivor, and, most importantly, an utterly shameless liar. If she gives Tender the push it needs to finally collapse, she can time her own exit gracefully with no damage to her own reputation. Henry, unfortunately, will be the last man standing in the rubble.

So Yasmin engineers a completely made-up government scandal, in which the benevolent Labour official who opposed Tender all along, Lisa Dearn (Chloe Pirrie), is framed for an imaginary cover-up of nonexistent memos decrying the company. Yasmin engineers all this to protect Jenny Bevan, the Labour minister who really is implicated in the scandal thanks to her chummy relationship with Yasmin and Henry themselves. 

Jenny refuses to play ball with the scheme. When she meets with Yasmin, Lord Norton, and the rabidly right-wing tabloid editor Kevin Ruhle, she’s so horrified by their willingness to print straight-up lies in the newspaper that she flees the meeting. Yasmin instead uses Harper’s connections to Burgess, the crusading FinDigest editor, to get the story out anyway. Harper and Burgess are both sharp people, but neither of them sees through Yasmin’s ruse, perhaps because it gets them exactly what they want, which is Tender’s head on a platter.

The handmade corruption story does its job. Lisa resigns at the behest of the slimy, unnamed Labour Prime Minister. Tender’s stock tanks. Yasmin resigns from the company without telling Henry. When he calls Whit from the office, he finds the man’s phone left behind in his desk. Everyone’s flown the coop and left Henry holding the bag.

His position could be physically dangerous for him. For one thing, Ferdinand, Tender’s connection to its Russian backers, shows up at Whit and Henry’s hotel room with that guy who was present during Rishi and James Dycker’s bender, making it clear he gave Dycker a hot dose to kill him. They tell Whit escape is not an option, and that he now lives (and, implicitly, dies) at the pleasure of their paymasters. Tender still has value to them, you see: It has the vulnerable personal and financial data of all its users, and that’s something the fascists can use. These people aren’t going to hesitate if Henry looks shaky.

For another, Henry is a threat to himself. In a ghastly phone call, a tearful Yasmin and Lord Norton justify their participation in tanking Tender despite knowing Henry will never come back from the shame of it. “He’s never faced consequences,” Yasmin says, as though framing him for crimes he didn’t commit is the same as using tough lough to make him take responsibility for his mistakes. They do this knowing who Henry is, knowing what he’s like, knowing his family history. As far as they’re concerned, they’re murdering him.

It’s not easy on Yasmin to do this, to be fair. When she calls Jenny and tries to land a job in her comms office, the politician indignantly blows her off. (Assuming you’ll just waltz right into the office of a woman whose mentor you publicly destroyed over her express wishes is classic Yasmin.) “You abandoned him when he needed you the most,” Jenny spits at Yasmin regarding her addict husband, “so you take that for a dance around your conscience.” You can see this blow to Yasmin land almost physically. 

So Yasmin does what she always does when she has nothing else: She returns to Harper. Their conversation is a meticulous unpacking of the unhealthy psychology that has long driven their relationship. Harper admits she’s happy to have all this power at Yasmin’s expense — after all, Harper is going to make a fortune when Tender tanks — and Yasmin thanks her for her honesty. Both say they envy each other: Yasmin wishes she had Harper’s intelligence and confidence, while Harper wishes she had Yasmin’s looks, pedigree, and ease of access to the world. Harper has always resented Yasmin for making her feel less than; Yasmin loves Harper for showing her how she can be more.

Most importantly, they zero in on Yasmin’s damage. Why does she feel this constant need to be in control, “to dominate” as Harper puts it, to “not be at anyone’s mercy.” She grew up at somebody’s mercy, Yasmin laughs through her tears, and can’t bear to live that way again.

The two go out clubbing, getting fucked up and dancing all up on each other to Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo.” That’s just one of any number of colossal, impeccable needledrops throughout the episode, also including When in Rome’s “The Promise,” A Flock of Seagulls’ “(I Ran) So Far Away),” and Enya’s “Only Time.” (I’ve heard the odd complaint about the older and somewhat more obvious music on the soundtrack this season before, but I find the application consistently thoughtful and the song choices unerringly rad, so I’ve got no issues. Bring on the goddamn New Order, I say.)

The two frenemies end their outing by resting against each other on the sidewalk outside, smoking cigarettes in the early morning light. 

“You have no idea how good I feel right now,” Harper tells Yasmin.

“We’re here forever,” Yasmin replies, “even if we can’t be.”

Let’s see if they feel this way about their lives, and each other, by the end of the business day.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.